Letter From a Missionary

Elder Hackworth - week 37 - with his new companion from Orange County

WEEK 37

Hey everyone. Sorry that it has been so long since I've last written. P-days just keep getting shorter and shorter. So my 6 month stand in the Lehi ward has come to an end. Last transfer was really fun. Elder Medina has become one of my best friends and I will really miss him. We were really lucky to stay together for a 2nd transfer but then we also had a 3rd companion, Elder Bell, that got added on to us. He was a new missionary fresh out of the MTC. He is staying with our mission for a couple months before he gets some paperwork processed and heads out to Ecuador for his mission assignment. 

    So last transfer was great. We started it off with Arleth's baptism and then ended it with the baptism of a 14 year girl from Honduras. It was really really cool because we received a referral for her my first week in the area, 6 months before. I taught her with all of my different companions for the whole 6 months and then my very last Saturday she got baptized. That was really cool. It was really amazing to get to see her progress all of the way through but also the effect that it had on her family. 

    Her parents have lived in the US for a while with their other kids, who are all members but recently were finally able to get their oldest daughter over here from Honduras. When I first met them they weren't going to church and supposedly had a lot of marital problems going on with a lot of fighting and stress in the house. I never directly saw anything myself other than a few comments here and there from the parents or the kids, but even so, over the 6 months I was able to see how the environment of the house slowly changed as the whole family came together to encourage and support their daughter/sister to get baptized. It was a gradual change but the week before the baptism was when it really struck me and I can honestly say that I could see a big change in the faces of everyone in that home. The last 6 weeks before she was baptized, the entire family had been to church every Sunday. The mom appeared as if she had a whole new smile on her face. If I had met her right then for the first time, I don't think I would have been able to imagine thinking of her, like I once did, as just a little bit grouchy. Her daughter before, would always be very conversational when her parents would leave the room but when they came back she would get very timid and go into a shell when we tried to ask her questions. Now, 6 months later, she was transformed. She had a whole new confidence. She would even sometimes catch me really off guard as she'd make a witty comeback to her parents that when they would try to playfully tease her about something. My very last Sunday though, the Dad was asked to lead the class in Sunday school. I don't know what he was supposed to be talking about, but he ended up getting really emotional in front of the class as he talked about his time that he was inactive and going through a lot of hard things and just how the kindness of other people in the ward went a long way. That was really cool to see because he was honestly one of the last people I'd expect to see get so emotional. 

    I'm super greatful I got to be in the area to see that entire fold events for the whole 6 months. I will miss them like crazy. I obviously don't know any of their private matters, all I can do is share my own observations and what I know to be true. As we went over 1-2x a week and read scriptures with the family for a period of 6 months and they started going more and more to church, those were the visual changes I saw in the parents and kids.

    Well it's already been a really long email so I'll have to leave other stories for other days. I'm now in a new area again. Leaving the Lehi ward was really sad and hard. It kind of gave me a small taste of what it will probably be like when my mission ends. That's gonna be even harder, but that's not for a while so I don't need to worry about it. Hope you guys all have a good week. Love y'all.